2017 Oregon Children’s Choral Festival!

The Oregon Children's Choral Festival was established in 1982 to provide an annual venue for school and community children's choirs to perform high quality choral music in the state of Oregon. The OCCF provides an opportunity for young singers aged 8-13 to meet and perform with other singers their own age in Oregon.

Each year hundreds, sometimes thousands, of young singers come from all over Oregon to attend this loved festival. Young singers get to perform for and received feedback from adjudicators and clinicians, some are chosen to perform for the whole festival and all choirs get to join in the mass pieces and experience the excitement and thrill of being in a world class performance hall!

Save the Date! Tuesday, April 18th, 2017

Directors often tell us that the Festival is the highlight of their singers’ year because of all the fun, experience and music it brings to their education and lives.

If you’ve not yet been to the OCCF, you and your kids are in for a real treat. If you are a regular attendee, you already know what a great event it is… we’ll see you soon!

Clinician - Jacob Steinberger

Choral Director, Churchill High School

Jennifer & I are so excited to have Jacob as our Clinician this year! We've had the privilege of working with him over the past year since he came to Churchill and we are so impressed with his musicality, rapport with students and ability to elevate his students to excellence. More than that, he is a great director, musician and friend. We love him a ton and you will too!

Jacob Steinberger received both a bachelor and master of music education from the University of Oregon in 2010 and 2015, respectively. During his studies at the U of O, he was section leader of the University Singers, co-directed the Women’s Ensemble, and served as Assistant Music Director of the internationally acclaimed a’cappella group, On the Rocks. In 2010, Jacob appeared with On the Rocks on Season Two of NBC’s primetime show, “The Sing-Off”. After graduating in 2010, Jacob took a position as Director of Choirs at Siuslaw High School and Middle School in Florence, OR. In his four years there, he grew the choral program from four to six choirs and led the top high school Chamber Choir to three ACDA Gold Awards and appearances at the OSAA State Championships with two finishes in the top five in the 4A division. In 2015, Jacob took a position as Director of Choirs at North Eugene and Churchill High Schools. This year, he has settled into a full time music position at Churchill where he directs the Concert Choir, Downing Street Singers, and teaches AP Music Theory. To Jacob, the best part of being a music educator is seeing young people get excited about music and the bonds that are created by being a part of an ensemble. In addition to teaching public school, Jacob is a fine jazz bassist and professional singer. He has performed with professional and community groups such as Kid Cudi, Pentatonix, Committed, Darmon Meader, Swing Shift, Women’s Choral Society and the Eugene Concert Choir, to name a few. In his spare time, Jacob enjoys traveling and doing anything outdoors with his wife, Amanda, and his two fur-baby Boston Terriers, Marve and Arlo.

Guest Performer - Evynne Hollens

Evynne Hollens

Seriously? How cool is it to have a real Princess share a little royalty with us at the festival? There have been a lot of Disney Princesses over the decades, but only Evynne Hollens has been them all!

Evynne Hollens is a singer & vocal coach primarily known for her online videos & live performances. With over 18 million views on YouTube, 9 million coming from her viral hit "Evolution of the Disney Princess" she releases weekly videos; frequently popular & Disney music video covers as well as her voice lesson series entitled "How To Sing". A native of the Pacific Northwest, she resides in Oregon with her husband Peter Hollens and is a performer, artistic director & has a private voice studio. In college she co-founded Divisi - the University of Oregon’s award-winning female a cappella group, featured in the best-selling book & inspiration for the hit feature film “Pitch Perfect".

I'm so grateful and excited to have Evynne come share a little of her vocal royalty, and more with us this year. It will be fantastic!

Special Featured Children's Choir

This year we will have the pleasure of having an award winning children's choir from the Philippines join us! We'll move things around a bit in the schedule to allow them a little extra time to perform for us all!

Please note: Our site is a mess... just setting things up so pardon the mess!

It's been a while since we composed a song for the festival! We started composing this piece years ago but you can all thank Chris Dobson for helping and getting us to finish it! We hope you'll enjoy River Run which is really about the love and relationships in our lives that flow into us and keep our personal seas full of life! Yeah, every lyric is a metaphor and nothing means what it seems ;-)

We are just finishing up the song and getting it notated so we'll post it in the next couple weeks (maybe three) for you to purchase as a printable download. TBA link. Note: Our website's been down for a bit, but I'll have to get it back up so you can order! ;-)

The haunting yet whimsical quality of this piece, almost folk-like in nature, is truly refreshing! The composer's lyrics center around a child who loves to sing during the day while playing, and at night "cries for those who have never loved and for those who never sing." These words will stir the emotions of all who hear them, and the lovely, flowing music really lets them shine!

Here is the vibrant and triumphant ending song from the Academy Award-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire." Featuring a blend of Hindi, English and other languages, the music is a powerful and diverse blend of styles and influences that will be incredible in performance and perfect for both concert choirs and show groups!